


Ghosts

by Aithilin



Series: Fresh Start [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Post-Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 21:11:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10727328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: After his duty is done, the King of Light is all but forgotten. Noctis lives, but no one remembers him.





	Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CkyKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CkyKing/gifts).



There was a funeral, Noct remembered that. He remembered being pulled from the throne, the burn of his bloodline magic rebuilding him, healing him as it seeped its way out of his body and back to its source in the Crystal. He remembered the weeks spent under his friends’ careful care, the elixirs and potions and draining every curative they had carried. He remembered the way they had discussed it, planned out the restoration, the plans to return to Lestallum to gather support and supplies.

Noctis remembered the way the recognition faded from them as they stepped beyond Insomnia for the first time. 

It started small— small exclamations of “oh, heh, forgot your eyes were blue for a second, buddy”— until they were further and further from the remains of the city. 

The funeral was outside of Insomnia. Noct watched, unremembered, apart, from the edges of the crowd before he left. It was just as much a goodbye for him as it was for them. Just as much a parting, and he didn’t have the strength to curse the Astrals any more for their petty idiocy. They had probably thought a ‘fresh start’ was a blessing. 

Without dying, Noctis had found that he had given up the last remnants of his life— the life he had known, had always known, had grown into— to his people. To just be a memory to his best friends. 

So he travelled, like he used to. 

Alone. 

There were odd jobs here and there. Farms that needed help, errands to run, a year on the road had given him some new skills with machines and bartering. There was still plenty of ways a lone hunter could keep himself fed and clothed around the kingdom. Even without the daemons stalking the night now, there were still plenty of bounties to be taken— and Noct had the advantage of knowing how to get into Dave’s good graces. 

He didn’t know when it seemed like a good idea to head to Galahd. To avoid the easy ports in the new Insomnia settlements and to just buy passage from Galdin Quay when it re-opened. Dave had told him that there was a faction of hunters out there looking to join up properly with the Lucian group, that they needed someone familiar with Lucis to brief them before they made the trip. 

Noctis still knew the Galahdian language picked up from Nyx. Still had the memory of long, lazy mornings in one of their beds, Nyx telling him stories in his native tongue. Before Noct, being the brat he always was, found a new use for that tongue. 

He didn’t know why he accepted, or why he let himself be talked into the trip out to the islands, but he went. He thought of Nyx— dead in the Citadel, the kukris wrested from the psychomancer that had guarded the old gates Noct’s prized weapons on his hunts now— and he just wanted to see where the man had come from. Where Nyx had come from. 

If he was a ghost in his own homeland, he wanted to go remember the ghost of his lover properly. The ghost of more peaceful times. Of when he wasn’t thinking beyond the next kiss and the next hour.

He met up with the little group of hunters, was told that there was a larger network connecting the islands. Protecting the islands already ravaged by occupation and war and ten years of darkness and daemons. He took a bounty to see what the hunts were like in this new place. Went to a bar to turn it in to Libertus, who didn’t remember the nights they had shared drinks over bad food with the other Glaives. Who didn’t remember the digs at each other and controlled resentment between them. Who simply said that Noct owed him a drink with the bounty money if he came back alive. 

Noct was used to handling the non-recognition. He was used to reintroducing himself and treating everything he already knew about people like a happy accident that he already knew what they drank, or ate, or were looking for. 

But he wasn’t used to that smile. That warm, wolfish grin from the man behind the bar. Those steel grey eyes looking him over without a shred of recognition, but every ounce of appreciation Noct remembered from their time together. Their lifetime together. 

“You must be the hunter Libs hired,” Nyx said easily, finishing the chore behind the bar to look Noct over with the same rakish charm Noct remembered. The same, intentionally open to assess the target, looks he used to give Noct before they knew each other. When Noct was just a brat getting into trouble. “Pretty thing, aren’t you?”

“Oh, definitely,” Noct smirked at the look of surprise at the answer. At the way Nyx recovered to a more genuine grin. The way Nyx decided that he was going to like this new Lucian poking around his bar. “But I’ll still let you buy me a drink.”

He had missed Nyx’s laugh, that easy, warm sound. 

He missed those fond looks and warm kisses. And the easy way “hello, beautiful” slipped through Nyx’s lips every morning. Or every night he came back home covered in the gore of his hunt and in desperate need of a shower. 

A fresh start may not be all bad.


End file.
